A Job with Room & Board ─ Memories of an Early Montana Forester

In 1907 at the age of eighteen, John B. Taylor took a summer job with the US Forest Service—mapping the wilderness and cruising the timber in the as-yet-unroaded Swan Valley in Montana. The job came with room and board—over a million acres of room and plenty of grouse to supplement the salted pork and hard crackers they brought with them. During the school year in his hometown of Missoula, he studied classics at the university, but after witnessing the brutal exploitation of timber along the Blackfoot River, he decided that “live trees beat dead languages.” He headed to the University of Michigan School of Forestry and obtained degrees in botany and forestry. After a stint in the US Army in World War I, he worked his way up through the Forest Service ranks, serving as ranger, range examiner, timberman, forest supervisor, and assistant regional forester in charge of personnel. His colorful stories portray life during the early days of the Forest Service, when travel was by horse and rangers carried guns. His day-to-day jobs included fighting fires, rounding up wild horses, disposing of moonshine stills on national forest land near Butte during Prohibition, and hiring down-and-out men for the CCC during the Depression.Taylor recorded his memories in the late 1960s, and family friend and author John C. Frohlicher transcribed the tapes and edited the manuscript. Says Frohlicher, “Too many men who spent their lives taming the wilderness are remembered only by a name on a little western creek.” Through these stories, John B. Taylor, 1889–1975, will be remembered for much, much more.

John B. Taylor was born on a farm in Nebraska in 1889, and his family moved to Missoula, Montana, in 1904. He married Catherine Hauck in 1926 and together they raised three children, Elsie, Dora, and Ellen. He died in Missoula in 1975 at the age of 84. In his acknowledgments for his memoir, John Taylor thanked A. B. Guthrie and Harold G. Merriam for their encouragement and counsel. A. B. Guthrie was in the same graduating class (1923) at the University of Montana (then Montana State University) as Taylor's wife, and she may have introduced them. The book editor, John C. Frohlicher, graduated in 1926 and may also have known Guthrie, as both were involved with The Frontier, the university's literary magazine, under the guidance of Harold G. Merriam. A reknown creative writing professor, Merriam was influential in turning Missoula into a hub of literary talent.